I’ve been wanting to write an article about communication issues among game designers for quite some time now. This issue has been simmering within the gaming industry for some time and has been troubling me as well. As a programmer, how can I communicate more smoothly with planners? This article simply aims to document the situations I have observed and, by the end, hopefully provide a better answer to my own doubts.

🗯️ Introduction

I am a professional game programmer with over 6 years of experience in the gaming industry, and over 10 years of actual game development experience (including my university days). As such, I consider myself to be a developer with considerable development experience. However, I have always had issues communicating with planners. Below, I would like to propose several broad directions that I believe are the root causes of this problem.

🗑️ The barriers to entry for planning are too low, and there is a lack of professional domain knowledge.

I think this title will upset many planners, but I believe it is a fact. Compared to art and programming, the barriers to entry for planning are much lower than for the other two categories. Some might say that planners also need to know and understand many things. I don’t deny that, but do you think professionals in other fields who are proficient in more skills know less than you? Are people who can’t even do programming or art really more passionate? Do they really only need to talk to get things done?

Next, we can talk about communication skills. Most planners only know how to express things related to their own experience. This statement may be a bit unclear, so let’s use an example. For example, when designing a game system that interacts with another system in a special way, most planners can only describe what they see and cannot analyze the underlying logic or operational mechanisms of the system (the process of reverse engineering). But the question is, who wouldn’t do that? Can a skill that even casual players can possess truly be called professional expertise? 🤔 At best, they’re just players working in the game industry, often jokingly referred to as “idea generators.”

Does that mean planners have no professional knowledge at all? Not exactly. I believe planning is the field that requires the most knowledge. The problem lies with the industry itself, and the specific reasons need to be examined from a historical perspective.

📜 Looking at it from a historical perspective

This is just speculation, but there is no evidence to support it. In fact, such information has been revealed in many past interviews.

How did the planning work come about? In the past, planning responsibilities were shared between programmers and artists (mostly programmers), resulting in fewer communication issues, primarily because their knowledge levels were relatively similar. Over time, the workload became too heavy for programmers and artists to handle alone, leading to the emergence of the planning role. Many believed that planning could be delegated to others, essentially treating it as a menial task.

The idea of having the planner handle this work is not inherently problematic, but the biggest issue arises when some people suggest that the planner should lead the project. This is a significant concern, as it would be akin to having a general assistant serve as your leader—can you truly trust such an arrangement?

❓ So why is communication with artists not a problem?

I think the reason is simple. Artists are a profession that is close to players, so it makes sense. Let’s take a more practical example. Artists can draw a flying horse, but can you “make” a flying horse in reality? Obviously not. At its core, drawing and engineering are fundamentally different disciplines.

💡 Becoming a true planner

I don’t consider myself a planner, but I believe a competent planner possesses the following qualities (at least the abilities that past planners have had).

  • The ability to reverse engineer and uncover the underlying mechanics of a game.
  • Possessing basic programming and art skills—not top-notch, but not so lacking that communication is impossible!
  • Being able to make accurate and realistic proposals (to assist art and programming).

The main distinction here is whether you are a “planner” or just a “player who happens to be working in the game industry”? 🤔

💬 Conclusion

I have led countless development teams, and every project has this issue. So if you’re working on a project like this, don’t feel too discouraged or angry, because you’re not alone. But the issue still exists and will continue to exist for some time. I believe that understanding the current situation is the only way to truly improve collaboration between development teams.

I’d like to add that no solution is provided here, because I believe the problem lies in the industry standards having deviated from their original purpose. In a way, it’s unsolvable. 🤔